Design and build
The Galaxy a54 is part of Samsung’s new generation of Premium a series mid-rangers it sticks to a pretty familiar formula but also brings upgrades in a more powerful chipset and a new main camera when it comes to looks the Galaxy a54 won’t shock anyone it seems like Samsung is going for the same aesthetic across the board this year with a flat back and individual rings for each camera here the back finish is glossy though and attracts fingerprints the frame is plastic with a satin finish one thing Samsung’s a series mid-rangers are known for is waterproofing and we’re glad to see an IP67 rating on the a54.
Screen specs and features
The front of the phone is a 6.4 inch Super AMOLED display with a 1080p resolution and a 120hz refresh rate it’s slightly smaller than last year’s 6.5 inch display but the aspect ratio is slightly wider too Samsung made an improvement when it comes to brightness we measured a maximum of 460 nits with the manual slider and this boosts all the way up to 980 nits in auto mode when in bright Sun the a54 also has Samsung’s Vision booster feature which shifts to tone mapping and colors based on ambient light to improve visibility this AMOLED display looks great as expected it’s sharp with deep blacks their support for HDR 10 plus and the color accuracy here can be excellent depending on the color settings you choose the refresh rate behavior on the a54 is pretty standard you get that smooth 120 hertz when swiping around and that can dial down to 60 when idling to save energy.
Stereo speakers test
Audio the galaxy a54 has a pair of stereo speakers the loudness here is good and the sound quality is nice with good sounding vocals and treble and some low end.
Under-display fingerprint scanner, Storage options, Android 13 and UI , Exynos 1380 performance
You can wake up and unlock the phone with an under display Optical fingerprint reader and the a54 comes with 128 or 256 gigs of storage on board and that is expandable through microSD the interface of the Galaxy a54 is Samsung’s latest one UI 5.1 running on top of Android 13. it’s more customizable than previous versions of one UI and also brings behind the scenes optimizations we have a dedicated video about when ui5 if you’d like to learn more about its specific features under the hood of the Galaxy a54 is one of its most significant upgrades a new exynos 1380 chipset it has a more powerful CPU and GPU than the exynos 1280 we had in last year’s Galaxy a53 in benchmarks the performance is quite solid it’s better than last year’s model and actually more akin to what we saw in the model before that the Galaxy a52s with a Snapdragon 778g when it comes to Thermal management though the a54 left more to be desired at least when it came to our CPU stress test where the stability is a bit Rocky.
Battery endurance and charging test
The galaxy a54 has a 5 000 million power battery just like last year it does better on screen on tests though and was able to earn an excellent overall endurance rating of 119 hours the a54 is rated for 25 watt charging and the charger doesn’t come in the box with a proper Samsung adapter we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 56 percent in half an hour now we’re on to the cameras.
Camera specs, Daylight photo quality, Low-light photo quality
The Galaxy a54 loses a depth sensor but brings a new 50 megapixel main cam so overall we have that main camera a 12 megapixel Ultra wide and a 5 megapixel macro cam during the day the main cam captures excellent photos they’re expressive with vibrant colors accurate white balance high contrast and wide dynamic range the detail is great too and is rendered with a reasonable level sharpening portrait mode shots for the main cam are good the subject separation is competent an HDR is there for you in difficult lighting the ultrawide cameras photos are nice the colors are fairly consistent with the main cameras and you get good contrast and a decent level of detail close-up photos from the macrocam are okay there’s enough detail and the colors are accurate if you’re shooting with the main cam at night the Galaxy a54 will automatically apply night mode processing to the photos this appears to happen even if the night mode symbol doesn’t show up on the viewfinder the photos have well-balanced exposures and nicely wide dynamic range with well-developed tonal extremes the detail level is excellent too the white balance is generally accurate though it can be a bit off at times the ultrawide cam is just so so in low light the detail level is decent and so is the dynamic range but the colors are washed out you don’t get Auto night mode processing here and the dedicated night mode brightens up the Shadows but for the overall quality doesn’t do a whole lot the a54 is a 32 megapixel .
Selfies, Daylight video quality, Low-light video quality
front-facing cam produces 12 megapixel selfies due to pixel vinning they’re excellent with great detail rendered in a very natural way colors are accurate and the dynamic range is very good the Galaxy a54 can record video in up to 4K at 30fps with both of its rear cameras the quality from the main cam is excellent there’s plenty of detail with natural rendition great contrast and very good dynamic range the colors look good and there’s no noise the ultra wide footage isn’t quite as good there’s a decent level of detail but it looks heavily processed there’s also heavy vignetting the dynamic range and colors are all right electronic stabilization is only supported in 1080P resolution it’s very proficient at smoothing things out though in low light conditions the a54’s main cam can produce good detail in areas of moderate lighting but highlights tend to be very harsh and colors are a little washed out.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy a54 it’s an all-around excellent mid-ranger the display battery life and camera quality are all great and of course you get IP rated Ingress Protection compared to other mid-rangers you don’t get super fast charging here and while the chipset is a nice upgrade over the previous model it doesn’t blow anyone away still the Galaxy a54 is a really well-rounded device that’s worth recommending.